Infantry Animation/Adding units

[benpark]

Are there any special problems with animating infantry units? I have seen tutorials on basic animation, so that seems like something down the road I may try to learn. Any information on files needing editing etc would be great to know for the future.

For some alterations (like changing only the helmet to a Fallschimjager one on the German infantry figure in MS3D), does the entire animation need to be changed if a small section of the model changes?

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: benpark
For some alterations (like changing only the helmet to a Fallschimjager one on the German infantry figure in MS3D), does the entire animation need to be changed if a small section of the model changes?

No, but I would get the hang of just doing the simple stuff first before moving on to infantry animation [;)]

[benpark]

Smock needs re-skinning and shortening, but it's a start.

If I have enough time remaining in the summer, I'll try to get this guy done and walking. After playing some CMBB, I'm missing the visual cues about each unit type in regards to the infantry. I really don't like seeing the "pioneer" unit as a stand in for most infantry types for the German side, and the lack of variety in the infantry units in PzC as a whole. Luckily, it's mod-able (although quite tough to learn for the beginner).

[RyanCrierie]

Yay, Fallschirmjager!

[Biffa]

Nice Ben, guess you noticed the gas mask can so I won't mention it, looks great tho, would make a nice change.

p.s. you bought yourself 3dsm, coz I didn't think you had it?

[benpark]

No, that's MS3D (I changed the background color in Photoshop to get rid of the eye melting blue background).

I have a copy waiting for me in my office, but that's gonna have to wait.

[Mraah]

Ben,

Were you going to use MS3D to build your soldier and animations or did you get 3D max?

Reason why I ask is because I have ideas on how to help you with the animation and allow you to quickly animate it and allow you easily import an object (soldier) over the animation bones so you can simply assign them to vertex points ... This will allow you to pump out the soldier variants without having to redo the animations evey single time.

In my SS below, I have a pioneer soldier that I imported from the directX mesh tool ... then rescaled it by 14.5 ... then imported the joints on top without removing the soldier mesh ... The trick it to save the bones as a MS3D ASCII, which saves the bones and animation.

Just a quick explaination but I don't want to waste your time if you're going the 3D max route.

Rob

EDIT NOTE : redid screenshot for better viewing ... zoomed in.

[benpark]

That's fantastic.

I was hoping to do as much as possible in MS3D, as I have something of a grasp of the basics now. I have been looking at 3DSMax, and it's too much for me, so this solution you have looks to be the ticket.

The importing of the animations is beyond my grasp, so some help there would be great. Also-why the rescale? So you could actually see something? Those guys are small!

THANKS!

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: benpark
Also-why the rescale? So you could actually see something? Those guys are small!

Well, I rescaled for two reasons ... 1st, yes, those guys are small and the joints are huge! ... 2nd, my 14.5 rescale was done for this example because I found a NINJA ms3d model on the net that has 300 frames of animation and the ninja figure is about 14.5 times bigger than the imported soldiers from PCK.

Attached to this post is the Ninja ZIP file I found over at http://www.psionic3d.co.uk/page.php?3 ... under free stuff, in the menu on left. This page will bring you to tutorials by the way.

This next paragraph explains (warning, alot of the word "then" is used) [;)].

Anyway, what I did was open the ninja ms3d and then saved it as a MS3D ASCII file. Then, I opened a new project to reset the screen, and then using the DirectX tool I imported the pioneer mesh and put his head on and moved the rifle to his hand as shown in SS. Then, I used the IMPORT feature from the file menu and imported the MS3D ASCII. So, now I have the little PcK soldier with the ninja and it's bones. Then, I selected the entire Pck soldier mesh, rescaled x,y,z by 14.5 and moved him to "fit" with the ninja. Then, I used SELECT->JOINTS and ran a selection box around the ninja joints, then I used SELECT->VERTEX and "shift" selected a box around the ninja (by shift-selecting you keep the joints selected while selecting the vertex points). Then, under the JOINTS tab, I clicked the CLEAR button to assure that I unassigigned all the vertex points from the joints. Now, you can safely "delete" the ninja mesh and then EXPORT your project as another MS3D ASCII file. This will save the soldier mesh and the joints (unassigned of course). Now, all you need to do is assign the joints to the vertex points ... and either watch the ninja animation with the Pck soldier (quite funny actually [:D]) or delete all the keyframes and animate yourself!

I hope all that made sense ... without my normal screenshots I can be longwinded. [:)]

EDIT NOTE :

The ninja starts with his arms down ... I had to move his arm bones to my soldier arms. And, I used the sword joint for my rifle joint. The tip of the rifle is the frame_bone_firingpoint01 and _firingpoint01_dir (I added this joint)... so it moves with the gun and it will always fire out of the barrel no matter where the gun is pointed. Also, the ninja joints are not named ... I started with joint1 as frame_mesh and then looked at the hiearchy of the rest of the joints to figure out what to name them. I didn't name the joints like you normally see like BIP01 etc. I don't know if you need to name them like that ... I used the old vehicle tut to name them ... ie frame_bone_body, frame_bone_neck, frame_bone_head, frame_bone_arm, frame_bone_leg, frame_bone_kneeL (left knee) .. etc. There are probably too many joints for what we need but it's a good example to use. It's probably better to start fresh and make your own joint heiarchy. Also, don't worry about assigning the material DDS for the skin ... it will reset everytime you import ... wait until all the imports are done.

You can find the animation frames for the infantry under the genericinfantry folder, called animation index.txt file. I'll post the contents here :

Animation Index

german_infantry01.x

Range: 0-800

Start Frame/ End Frame / Start Time/ End Time
Walk 0/ 24 / 0.00 / 0.80
Run 37/ 48 1.23 / 1.60
Stand-Idle 65/ 150 / 2.17 / 5.00
Stand-Fire 165/ 176 / 5.50 / 5.87
Stand-Death 189/ 235 / 6.30 / 7.83
Stand->Kneel 250/ 280 / 8.33 / 9.33
Kneel-Idle 290/ 380 / 9.67 / 12.67
Kneel-Fire 390/ 405 / 13.00 / 13.50
Kneel-Death 415/ 450 / 13.83 / 15.00
Kneel->Stand 460/ 485 / 15.33 / 16.17
Stand->Prone 495/ 505 / 16.50 / 16.83
Prone-Idle 515/ 565 / 17.17 / 18.83
Prone-Fire 575/ 585 / 19.17 / 19.50
Prone-Death 595/ 610 / 19.83 / 20.33
Prone->Stand 620/ 680 / 20.67 / 22.67
Crawl 701/ 728 / 23.37 / 24.27
Grenade Toss 740/ 800 / 24.66 / 26.66

Don't forget ... with MS3D, you need to add 1 frame ... so your total range is 1-801. You'll need to add 1 to all the Start/End frames. For instance, the walk is 1-25, run is 38-49 ... etc.

Anyway, it's a start and you can practice messing around. Maybe someone can explain more about where to put keyframe null points in (like in the vehicle animation tut). I haven't mess with it much ... basically having my soldier carry his gun in front of him while walking (well, a simple walk that made him goose-step because I didn't move his knees)[:D].

Rob


NINJA ZIP attached below ...